Time, In Review
Several people have commented on my age lately, and not, ironically, favourably --- as in, they thought me too young and considered that a bad thing. 22, 25, I'd almost lost a job bid because of it ("but you're so young, our clients will never take us seriously" "Mr Kim, sir, I'm 32." "Oh... what?" I still can't tell if the 40 year old Korean man who himself looks 28 was flirting or not) --- but it brings up this point: Time had stopped for me, somewhere back there. And I know it's this great romantic concept of time stopping, eyes across the room, so on and so forth, but the reality of it is time on pause is a terrible, terrible thing. Nothing moves forward. Nothing changes. Waiting for the shoe that just now fell to hit the ground. Struggling to get that last breath out or keep it in. Time stopped is moments missed. It's the things you were meant to do that you never did, it's the things you meant to say that will never find its chance. It is an infinity, which sounds like endless possibilities, but really is just a pile of interestingly shaped broken pieces that never quite made it. (The potential of a thing is not enough.)
I'm not terribly sure when it'd started, I'm rather afraid to find out, I'm afraid. It stopped holding meaning. The days were relative but meant nothing. One day was as good as the other, like an infinite game of Escape The Room --- now, that's not to say that time passed completely point- and joy- less. If it had, I might have noticed sooner. Or perhaps not, I'm uncertain. I cannot say for sure if those moments kept me placated to the bigger picture or deadened me to it. Perhaps there isn't such a big difference?
And then it started to move again. 13 months to the day, in fact, although I will admit I hadn't noticed until others pointed it out. Lucky number 13; because I always have to defy convention. It's a thing lol. It's in the little things. A slip of paper, a bill, a tax return. It's suddenly having things to say to friends again, and having people you want to say it to. And wants, instead of "eh, if it happens". My phone data usage has shot up 30x since my last birthday (which is a greater comment on how little I was using it before than the 1.1g/mth I'm currently clocking).
Some things change, some things stay the same.
I find myself doing pretty much the same nature of work I'd been doing all this time, hopping from project to project, hand to mouth. I dislike the uncertainty. At the same time, I have started to appreciate the odd little way work seems to fall on me when I need it the most.
I've started to feel like I could maybe tackle the world of academia again; although I've yet to actually open a textbook, including the drivers' ed one I've had since May *cough*
I know more about myself now than I really care to, and admit more about myself than I would really confess. I'm making an effort to actually talk (i.e. to people) more about it. Sometimes I fail, and fail to see the point. Usually I'm telling myself it's only fair to leave a trail for those who want to know to find out. Mostly it just feels self-aggrandizing ('sif people want to know what's spinning around in that crazy head and hang off your every word!). We hate most self- prefixed words.
Still I am, at the end of the day, my own worst enemy. Second guessing, doubting, over analyzing. Critical. Why, just the other day I was saying something clever about loving oneself. It is not a thing I am wrought to do. It was easier when all you knew was your image of how you want to see yourself.
Some things change, some things stay the same.
Some things change to come full circle, some things have never changed, you're just looking at it from a different place now.
I did go back through these archives after all, and discovered many, many things, like interesting odds and ends one picks up from a jumbled up warehouse. Items of intrigue and potential, of power, but ultimately no more than a useless trinket to hold on to and weigh down one's pockets.
The one to share this time, is this:
I am an eccentric kind of possessive. I do not have a natural desire to arbitrarily claim things, perhaps, or perhaps, it is too wide on the other side of the extreme that comes around to the null value. I can admire a creature, think it the cutest thing in the world, it does not incite my desire to take one home to call my own.
I can admire a thing of beauty in the wild, but it gives me no desire to capture it and keep it on my mantlepiece. In that moment, it is the experience, the emotion, the aesthetic, shall we say, that is what matters. How I'd experienced it. ------ And I hoard it. So much so that as often as not, I find myself reaching out and destroying the object of inspiration. It is not that I covet it and want to put it in a box. I do not wish to keep it crystallized in a collection. It is merely that I cannot bear for others to peek into that moment and share in it.
And in the same vein, I never actually write about the people who actually matter to me. I write to them. I make vague references to them, usually to myself. I don't discuss them in writing. I never commit them. Cannot bear to pin them down with paltry words. Because, perhaps, that would be sharing. And sometimes, in that same vein, I wonder if I can be trusted to not destroy them when the moment of experience that is my lifetime with them ends, just to ensure that that time can never be recreated for another after me.
I'm not terribly sure when it'd started, I'm rather afraid to find out, I'm afraid. It stopped holding meaning. The days were relative but meant nothing. One day was as good as the other, like an infinite game of Escape The Room --- now, that's not to say that time passed completely point- and joy- less. If it had, I might have noticed sooner. Or perhaps not, I'm uncertain. I cannot say for sure if those moments kept me placated to the bigger picture or deadened me to it. Perhaps there isn't such a big difference?
And then it started to move again. 13 months to the day, in fact, although I will admit I hadn't noticed until others pointed it out. Lucky number 13; because I always have to defy convention. It's a thing lol. It's in the little things. A slip of paper, a bill, a tax return. It's suddenly having things to say to friends again, and having people you want to say it to. And wants, instead of "eh, if it happens". My phone data usage has shot up 30x since my last birthday (which is a greater comment on how little I was using it before than the 1.1g/mth I'm currently clocking).
Some things change, some things stay the same.
I find myself doing pretty much the same nature of work I'd been doing all this time, hopping from project to project, hand to mouth. I dislike the uncertainty. At the same time, I have started to appreciate the odd little way work seems to fall on me when I need it the most.
I've started to feel like I could maybe tackle the world of academia again; although I've yet to actually open a textbook, including the drivers' ed one I've had since May *cough*
I know more about myself now than I really care to, and admit more about myself than I would really confess. I'm making an effort to actually talk (i.e. to people) more about it. Sometimes I fail, and fail to see the point. Usually I'm telling myself it's only fair to leave a trail for those who want to know to find out. Mostly it just feels self-aggrandizing ('sif people want to know what's spinning around in that crazy head and hang off your every word!). We hate most self- prefixed words.
Still I am, at the end of the day, my own worst enemy. Second guessing, doubting, over analyzing. Critical. Why, just the other day I was saying something clever about loving oneself. It is not a thing I am wrought to do. It was easier when all you knew was your image of how you want to see yourself.
Some things change, some things stay the same.
Some things change to come full circle, some things have never changed, you're just looking at it from a different place now.
I did go back through these archives after all, and discovered many, many things, like interesting odds and ends one picks up from a jumbled up warehouse. Items of intrigue and potential, of power, but ultimately no more than a useless trinket to hold on to and weigh down one's pockets.
The one to share this time, is this:
I am an eccentric kind of possessive. I do not have a natural desire to arbitrarily claim things, perhaps, or perhaps, it is too wide on the other side of the extreme that comes around to the null value. I can admire a creature, think it the cutest thing in the world, it does not incite my desire to take one home to call my own.
I can admire a thing of beauty in the wild, but it gives me no desire to capture it and keep it on my mantlepiece. In that moment, it is the experience, the emotion, the aesthetic, shall we say, that is what matters. How I'd experienced it. ------ And I hoard it. So much so that as often as not, I find myself reaching out and destroying the object of inspiration. It is not that I covet it and want to put it in a box. I do not wish to keep it crystallized in a collection. It is merely that I cannot bear for others to peek into that moment and share in it.
And in the same vein, I never actually write about the people who actually matter to me. I write to them. I make vague references to them, usually to myself. I don't discuss them in writing. I never commit them. Cannot bear to pin them down with paltry words. Because, perhaps, that would be sharing. And sometimes, in that same vein, I wonder if I can be trusted to not destroy them when the moment of experience that is my lifetime with them ends, just to ensure that that time can never be recreated for another after me.